Chris Selley: The monarchy is a terrible idea, except for the alternatives

On May 18, the Queen hosted an event that briefly aroused the fury of human rights advocates. Amidst the pea soup fog of Diamond Jubilee goodwill, it was basically a one-day story. But it highlighted just how fundamentally indefensible hereditary rule is on its face, if not in practice.

The event was a “luncheon for sovereign monarchs” — 26 of them (including some stand-ins), plus the Queen herself. Among them were the heads of state of some very successful constitutional monarchies (Denmark, the Netherlands, Japan) and the heads of some no-longer-reigning families, including King Constantine II of Greece and Crown Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia.

More controversially, there was a smattering of more-or-less absolute monarchs (or their representatives) from the lower ranks of the world’s freedom tables: King Hamad bin Issa al-Khalifa of Bahrain, who oversaw some of the most violent clampdowns on protest during the Arab Spring; the fabulously wealthy polygamous King Mswati III of oppressive, dirt-poor Swaziland, who is basically a cartoon villain; and an envoy from the House of Saud, which speaks for itself.

This wasn’t a gathering of heads of state or government. This was a collection of people who hold, or held, or whose ancestors held, powers ranging from ceremonial figurehead to hated dictator, dining together for no reason other than that they were born into a certain powerful family in their respective countries. No one, surely, would devise a universe from scratch in which such an event would even be contemplated.

Well, maybe Andrew Coyne would. In Tuesday’s National Post, he made about as good a case as one could for a hereditary head of state. “The same ritual was performed over and over,” he observed of the Jubilee celebrations in London: “People first beamed at the Queen, then turned and beamed at each other. And, a second later, thought: how marvellous it is to be a part of this, this place, this tribe, this happiness.” No elected or appointed president could possibly hold such sway, he argued.

Elsewhere on this page, Jonathan Kay argues that this reads “like a North Korean propaganda sheet describing teary proletarians looking upon Dear Leader.” But the Queen isn’t maintaining a cult of personality. As Kelly McParland points out, also on this page, she wields no real power, claims no acts of heroism. She barely has a personality. Rather, she embodies a set of fairly banal principles — decency, duty, stoicism — in an exemplary way, strongly underpinned by her association with Britain’s victory in the Second World War. It remains to be seen how much of that affection passes through to her heirs, who grew up in peacetime and occasionally tumble out of tacky London nightclubs at 3 a.m. But beyond the basic hereditary weirdness of it all, I’m not seeing a problem here.

Here in Canada, hardcore monarchists aside, the most common argument for the status quo is that one shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken. I’m neither monarchist nor anti-monarchist; I think the Queen’s terrific, and suspect I’ll be able to live with Charles and William to follow. But I’m reliably unimpressed by republican arguments, certainly those of popular commentators and politicians. It is perfectly defensible to argue that our head of state should live in Canada, and that any Canadian citizen ought to be eligible to serve in that capacity. But many people seem more interested in simply bashing the Royals.

New Democrat MP Pat Martin exemplified this problem in an interview with Global News on Sunday. Asked why we should abandon the monarchy, he responded that “new Canadians should be swearing an oath of allegiance to their country Canada and not to this … hangover of the Colonial Era,” which is just a snarky restatement of his position. He went on to ask whether it isn’t “kind of goofy that our currency has the face of a foreign monarch,” which isn’t an argument at all (and she’s not foreign).

Toronto Star columnist Bob Hepburn exhibited another common republican problem last week: He called for a referendum on whether to abandon the monarchy, followed by a federal (not Royal) commission to pick the two best potential alternative systems, followed by another referendum on those. This puts the cart way before the horse. It’s true that “only” 51% of Canadians think we should preserve the monarchy, according to a recent Harris-Decima poll. (Quebec’s 24% support is a bit of a drag.) But we have no idea at all how many Canadians would support the alternatives. Do we really want yet another politician in Ottawa? Do we really want our discredited parliament appointing a head of state?

You don’t jump out of the plane before you check your chute. Enough bitching and whining, anti-monarchists. The status quo is weird; we get it. But it’s time to stump for exactly the sort of system you’d like to replace it, not just change in general.